Weekly Byte 11.13.09

Another busy week in technology!
On Thursday Frank Muto, Kristin Giron and I attended the Three Rivers Educational Technology Conference (www.tretc.org)in Cranberry. Keynote speaker Hall Davidson delivered an engaging opening session with a focus on moving from hard copy books to digital copies and the impact of using video to better engage today's learner. Excellent!
If you want to see or learn about some of the resources we gathered from this conference send me an email and I will get it to you.

Teacher Highlights
This week I had the pleasure of working with Mrs. Leopold's English class using Pixton to create comic strips for the Odyssey. Cool stuff! Her students will be using Pixton on Monday and Tuesday periods 3 and 4, stop by and check it out!

Website of the Week
www.prezi.com, an amazing presentation tool! Check this out! It will make you rethink using PowerPoint in your classrooms.

Blackberry Tip of the Week
Download the Audible.com player to your Blackberry and you can then listen to audiobooks! Many free audiobooks and many that you have to pay for. I downloaded Hot, Flat and Crowded, the latest book from Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat. I also downloaded Tribe, interesting book about the power of groups of people.

Weekly Byte 11.05.09

Good day!
Sorry for the Weekly Byte becoming the Monthly Byte, busy few weeks. But that is good. Obvisouly my services are becoming more important! Well what have I been doing the last few weeks? I have been working with the Learning Support Department on using Google Calendar to manage their students classroom and home work. We have had some glitches but we are in the process of working that out.
The World Language Department, in particular Val and Jeff graciously invited me to their classrooms to share Glogster with their students. I had the chance to see some of Val's students present yesterday. Muy Bien!
Ms Giron and I spent the last two days entertaining administrators and board members in her classroom. They were invited to observe what Kristin's students have been doing with Literature Circles. Truly Awesome stuff! If you get a chance check out her class. Here is her Ning (frenglish12.ning.com)
I have also be working with Ms. Metzgar on planning a Heroes of Murrysville Project for her Mythology Unit.

I have been planning a few training opportunities for the FR faculty.
- Professional Development November 6th 7:30-10:30 and 11:30-2:30
- Thinkfinity Training/Senior High November 16th, 2:30-3:30
- Thinkfinity Training/Middle School December 4th, 7:00-8:00
- Math Technology Colaboration Day/@Latrobe November 23rd, 9:00-2:00
- English Technology Collaboration Day/@Valley December 16th, 9:00-2:00
- 21st Century Teaching and Learning Institute/@Hershey December 7-10 (BWesterlund, CRoland, TBurns and my self)

Site of the Week
http://teachweb2.wikispaces.com/
This wiki offers evaluation of numerous Web 2.0 tools. So if you hear about a tool or read about one somewhere come here and check out their evaluation of the tool before you use it. They give strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This will help protect you and your students.

http://todaysmeet.com
Create a short term chat room for use in class. This tool is easy to use and will allow you to create a chat room in minutes. Great tool for in class discussions. Engage all of your students with this tool.

As always if you have any educational technology needs please don't hesitate to ask.

thanks and have a great weekend!

Weekly Byte 10.9.09

Hello All,

Welcome back to the first installment of the Weekly Byte for 2009!

I have been working with many of the teachers here at the high school on a number of different projects.
- Ms Giron has been doing amazing things with Literature Circles in her English 12 class
- The Social Studies ladies (Ms Miller, Ms Scarazzo, Ms Pursglove, Ms Rutherford) are using Glogster to present their Conservative/Liberal Issues
-Induction teacher training focusing on student collaboration

Site of the Week
Google Docs, this is a great tool for student and teacher collaboration. This tool can be used to create documents, spreadsheets, surveys and presentations where multiple people can collaborate on the same file at the same time.
http://docs.google.com

Technology Integration idea of the Week
Get students to collaborate online on projects using Google Docs! Students can co-author documents, spreadsheets, surveys and presentations for classes. Eliminate the need for emailing files or passing a jump drive around. Students cannot lose work and worry about one person not pulling their weight on projects.

Teacher Tool of the Week
http://twitter4teachers.pbworks.com
This source gives teachers access to other teachers sharing resources and lesson ideas using Twitter!

Tuesdays with Roger will be returning soon!
Upcoming topics
Quizlet (online flash cards)
Moodle (provide students with 24/7 access to course materials and collaboration)
Google Docs (student collaboration)

thanks and have a great day!

Weekly Byte 7.29.09

I am working with some fantastic educators at the Westmoreland Intermediate Unit today. We are working with Google Docs, Google Sites, Wikis, and Blogs. I am wondering why none of the FR teachers signed up for my class......
Anyways enjoy your summer and see you in August.

Weekly Byte 5.4.09

Hello Franklin Regional!

It has been two weeks since the last Byte, sorry for you avid readers. This week we have a few trainings that FR teachers will be attending. On Tuesday we have a math teacher and a science teacher attending Promethean Board training at the Westmoreland Intermediate Unit. On Wednesday there will be two English teachers taking the same training. Awesome stuff at the WIU! If you ever get the chance or are interested in upcoming training please let me know.

FR has been a popular place lately. We have had visitors from Burrell, Apollo Ridge and East Allegheny the past few weeks. They are coming here to see the great things that our teachers are doing in the classrroom. Special thanks to the Math dept, the Business Technology Dept, and Kristin for their efforts in sharing with these other districts.

Jesse and I attended a workshop at PSU last week. The workshop focused on copyright and fair use. It presented some new facts that many of you are probably not aware of when it comes to using resources in education. More to come on this!
Sites from session:
http://pslacff.wikispaces.com/Fair+Use
http://copyrightconfusion.wikispaces.com/
http://copyrightfriendly.wikispaces.com


Teacher Spotlight
Special kudos to Gaye Burkett and Kristin Giron for giving their students the opportunity to use Evernote as an electronic option to note cards for research. Kristin gave her students the option of using Evernote (online notes) or the traditional handwritten note cards. 84% of students chose the online version! This is a great tool for notes and gives students a viable option to handwritten notes.
Thanks Gaye and Kristin for giving your students this choice!

Site of the Week
Kitzu, this site provides a ton of photos for educators organized by subject.

Weekly Byte 4.17.09

We are 33 days from the end of the year. A couple things to remind you.

1. embedded learning coursework should be completed by July 31st
2. I know that many of you do final projects in your classes. If you would like some new ideas on how to improve the experience for you and your students please let me know and we can set a date that I can help you with freshening up your final projects.
3. I am available to work with anyone on new ideas for next year if you like to plan ahead. I would even be available this summer to meet and share any resources or ideas for the next school year

Site of the Week
www.shmoop.com
This site provides a ton of resources on a variety of Literature, US History, and Poetry. You can search for different topics and the site provides you with summaries, themes, quotes, plot analysis, study questions, characters, and web sites about the topic you choose. There is even a Book Club page that provide opinions and discussions about various books. Great resource! thanks KAG

Story of the Week
I have a teacher, who shall remain nameless, that has recently caught the technology bug! She has been slowly adding Moodle discussions and the use of other online resources to her courses. It is great to see her new found excitement. She told me the other day that she had students ask her if they could use Quizlet to help them study for one of their upcoming exams and her student have been much more engaged in discussions thanks to her Moodle discussion boards.


Personal Site of the Week
I decided to add this new segment to my weekly byte.
www.hulu.com
You may have seen a tv commercial about this site. Hulu provides tons of free movies and television shows that you can view whenever you like. They include networks such as Fox Movie Channel, NBC Universal, National Geographic, the Sundance Channel and more. Check it out!

Weekly Byte 4.7.09

The end of the year is fast approaching!

We have completed our last late start for the year. Many CFF teachers have completed their coursework and to you I say thanks. Keep in mind that this coursework is due to be completed by July 31, 2009. If you are going to have an issue with completing your course by the deadline please let me know so that we can figure out a plan to meet the deadline. Thanks for all your hard work.

It is the time of year for final presentations and projects. If you would like help designing final projects or learning a new tool that your students can use to better demonstrate their knowledge please don't hesitate to ask me for help. We can sit down and work on this together.

Another thing to keep in mind, Jim will be reimaging the teacher laptops in May. I will be working with him on developing a schedule so that your classes are not interrupted by this necessary update to our computers. That being said it would be a good idea to start saving your files to the network H: drive and not your laptop. This will expediate the process and minimize loss of work. More on this to come.

Tidbit of the Week
In a recent email exchange with one of our colleagues I was commenting on how their class has changed this year and this is their response, "It has changed significantly this year. I'm trying to change the way I see education, especially as an English teacher. I used to be the "discuss, discuss, discuss" in class kind of teacher, but I have seen better results when I motivate them to think on their own through online discussions and nings and web tools. For me, that is the best thing about the technology. Compared to my class discussions last year, my online discussions are 10 times better because students can truly share their feelings about an issue. And the classmates are great at responding to each other's comments. I can't tell you how happy students are to learn new things or use the board. They love evernote!"

Site of the Week
www.slideshare.net, this is a great tool that allows you to post PowerPoint presentations onto the web and allows other access. You can just upload an existing PowerPoint and make it available to your students.

As always let me know if you need help with anything, a quick technology session or just some help with a new idea.

Have a great Spring Break!

Weekly Byte 3.30.09

I had a chance to speak with some teachers about Twitter the other day. I was explaining to them what it was and the fact that I was currently trying to figure out how it could be used for education. One teacher made the statement, "I think that is a problem when people are always trying to figure out how to use new technologies for educational purposes." I didn't make a response because I am not good at quick responses but after thinking about it my response should have been this, every day there is something new in the world of technology. Our students use new technologies all the time for personal uses and some for educational uses. Part of my job as a Technology Coach is to find these resources for teachers and show them how they can make their classrooms more engaging, make their jobs easier and/or make their students educational experience better. So if you ever hear about a new technology and wonder how it can improve your class let me know and I will help you to figure out if it is a good tool and how we can improve you class with it.

Here are some ideas on how Twitter could help you.
http://mrslwalker.com/?p=79620905
Free Tech 4 Teachers
Twitter

Reminders
Wednesday we have our last late start to complete our embedded coursework. Please make sure that you can access your class prior to Wednesday morning so if there are any problems I can get them remedied. thanks

Weekly Byte 3.23.09

Hello CFFers!

Top 10 Reasons Why using your Promethean Board is better than using your Overhead Projector

10. Can you connect to the internet through your Overhead Projector?
9. Streaming audio and video is difficult to do through your OP.
8. Aren't you tired of green fingers?
7. Keeping a folder full of plastic sheets is a nightmare.
6. Getting student feedback is alot easier on a Prom Board.
5. You can't save all of your work easily and in an editable format with overheads.
4. Flipcharts are engaging, engaging, engaging
3. You can't record an overhead and post it to your wiki, blog or Moodle page.
2. Tina likes technology!
1. You don't have to talk to Hursky!

Embedded Learning courses
April 1st is our last late start to work on your CFF courses. Please make sure that you can log in and your course is working this week so that I can deal with any problems.
Most of you are progressing nicely and many are finished for this year. The coursework needs to be completed by July 31st!
Thanks for all your hard work.

Tech Update
Activstudio, the software that you now use to create flipcharts has been upgraded! The new version is called Activinpire. We will probably look to upgrade next school year but Kristin has already downloaded it and begun to use it. Many new features and its easier to create interactive flipcharts. If you are interested in checking it out before next year let me know.

Check out www.prometheanplanet.com for all things dealing with your Promethean boards. The site offers training, teacher tips and many teacher created flipcharts that you can download and use in your classes. This site will save you time and effort.

Thanks to everyone who responded to my Teacher Needs Assessment Survey. I will be using your feedback to better serve you.

The first person who emails me the term of the day, Cloud Computing, will receive a prize.

Weekly Byte 3.9.09

The Flip the Switch Event was a rousing success! On Friday February 27th, we had seventeen guests at the Senior High School. Representative Pallone, Representative Markosek, Dr. D'Arcangelo, Frank Muto, several board members, members of the press and technology staff members from the Greater Latrobe School District and the Penn Trafford School District got a chance to witness first hand how our teachers and students are integrating technology. Our teachers and students did a fabulous job demonstrating how we are changing instruction here at the high school. I want to thank everyone for their participation in this event.

Special thanks to Principal Burns, Kristin Giron, Dana Metzgar, Daniel Casebeer, Jeff Traphagen, Barb Koury, Pam Mayo, Mark Wolfgang, Dottie Grego, Lynne Stalnaker, Christa Smith, Beth Hitt, Doug Komandt, Cameron Loutit, Meagan Daldoss, Kaitlyn Green, Jeff Wicklund and his crew for their efforts.

Websites of the Week
www.tinyurl.com, have you ever had a website that you wanted to share with students or colleagues but it was extremely long and difficult to share? Tinyurl will allow you to copy a long url and have a short one created for you. This makes it easier to share.

http://jeopardylabs.com, this site is a great tool for creating Jeopardy games for use in your classrooms. It is much easier to use than any Jeopardy templates that you may currently be using to create games for reviewing course information. Give it a try.

This week I will be continuing to visit English classrooms to see how I can help our English Department improve instruction.

Next Tuesday, March 17th I will be doing a Tuesdays with Roger session on using wikis in the classroom.

Thanks and have a great week!